1. “Wisconsin hired this guy from Texas to evaluate their CWD problem. I don’t know how this guy from Texas can help them, CWD has been waltzing across Texas for 10 years. seems Dr. Kroll should go back home and take care of CWD in Texas coming in from New Mexico. …just my opinion of course.”

2. “I still can’t believe that our tax dollars are going to this TEXAS DEER FARMER for his opinion on Wisconsin wildlife management – something in which he has NO expertise, and NO credentials.”

3. “About time somebody lays into the DNR and their complete failure at managing the deer herd, especially in the northern third of the state where wolves are a far bigger problem than these doofuses ever care to admit. I’m sure they just sit down there in Madison and think that wolves are a beautiful thing and have absolutely no idea how devastating their influence is. I’ve hunted in Barron and Washburn counties for the last 45 years and have never seen it so hard to find a deer, much less shoot one. Last year, our party of 8-9 people hunted hard every day and no one saw more than 5 deer, with a few of us never even seeing one all season. And to those who might want to still say the numbers are not bad and that we are not good hunters, tell me this – why don’t we even see any tracks? Unless the deer have learned to climb trees, that usually is a good indicator the deer are not there.”

4. “The DNR biologists are just another group of dedicated public employees to be vilified for the sake of a few votes for politicians. A politically motivated study at a ridiculous price comes to a politically correct conclusion. Big Deal, big surprise. I would have gladly reviewed the literature for a fraction of the cost and come up with that ‘on command’ conclusion. Some expert!”

5. “This is a perfect example of starting with a set of conclusions and working backwards toward the beginning of the investigation looking for evidence… Walker heard what the hunters were complaining about and found a dude to validate their opinions. We get to pay for this?”

6. “Hey quit worrying: At present rates of decline in hunting interest among teens, all you graying hunters will have a lot more deer per hunter in a few years.”

7. “Also I might say that 55 years ago in Buffalo county when I started hunting if you saw nine or 10 deer in a season you saw alot of deer. Now the hunter want to see 50 deer a day. They are not hunters today they are shooters.”

8. “If Wisconsin hunters thinks that they had a bad deer season 2 years ago why is it that Upper Michigan, Ohio and Missouri all complained about their bad deer hunting.”

9. “Leave it to Walker to have a ‘czar’ in his command. $125,000 for this? I suppose Walker would say he created a job.”

10. “The DNR’s job is to keep the deer herd to a manageable number, not personally ensure that hunters get a deer every year. That’s why it’s called hunting. There is an implication that there is a chance that the hunter will come home with nothing.”

1, 2, 4 and 5 really scored a 10 with me. Absolutely nothing in this prelim
report to show that the $ were spent on anything worthwhile. Deer hunting
will always be about the haves and the have nots. Those of us in between
just need to control our trigger fingers and only take the excess each year,
plus police our own ranks better. Poaching is rampant, and so is wounding by
those who think just because they have an $800 bow with 85 percent letoff
that’s easy to shoot or a fancy rifle and condo stand where running deer fly
by, there’s no need to practice prior to the hunt. Our archery equipment is
getting so easy to use, yet instead of cutting back on the season we’re
forever expanding it. It’s only a matter of time before the gun hunters and
crossbow hunters demand more of the action.

What this shows is that there are a lot of Walker bashers that no matter what the topic (and how ignorant they are on the subject) they will simply rail against anything Walker does.

I doubt hunters will find much in the way of surprises in the report of initial findingd by Dr. Kroll and his team but that is to be expected because it’s what we what hunters have been saying for years. Dr. Kroll and his team came to WI and met with reps from the state’s orgs and with hunters and then created a web site seeking input from hunters. He and his team also dug deeply into WI deer management plan via requests made of DNR reports and data. Dr. Kroll and his team have now formulated and issued a report of findings that is exactly what hunters in WI have been saying for years.

So what’s the difference? The difference is that in the past, the DNR and its willing accomplices in the outdoor media downplayed, dismissed and insulted the hunting community and labeled them complainers and “Barstool biologist” because they dared express their concerns for the direction WI deer management has been headed and because hunters objected to management prescriptions we dared to disagree with (as if we had no place objecting despite the fact that we are one half of Wisconsin’s whitetail deer management team responsible for not only carrying out the mission but paying for it.)

Now we have a preliminary report of findings generated by several Pedigreed biologists with the letters PhD, MS, BS, AAS, and titles such as Wildlife biologist, Chief scientist, Professor, teacher and researcher in the fields of Forestry, wildlife population dynamics, Wildlife biology, human dimensions of deer management who have produced many books, dissertations and peer reviewed papers all focusing on wildlife and deer management that represents a combined 100 years of experience directly related to the subject and this team has now produced a preliminary report that mirrors that of Wisconsin’s “barstool biologists”.

Wisconsin’s barstool biologists have been making these same observations publicly and on this and other web sites and in print and in testimony for many years so it is refreshing and a validation of Wisconsin’s many barstool biologists to know that their combined efforts and their concerns have finally been heard and corroborated by a team of honest to goodness biologists.

So, well done fellow barstool biologists. You are in good company now that there is a team working to address the problems you have been so vocal about for so long even if you saw little if any actions addressing your concerns from the state. It looks like the tide is turning. But be warned, The same willing accomplices that labeled you as barstool biologists, will downplay this as “No big deal” and nothing new and a waste of money, insisting that this was all well known already (essentially admitting that we hunters were actually right all along) or that this team was hand selected by insiders and is scripted. Just make sure to continue to do what you have been doing all along by ignoring those irrelevant folks that would still insist you ought to instead listen to the state’s biologists and the out of date management plans and that they know better than you and to just keep shooting.

Lastly and certainly not to be overlooked is a thank you to Governor Walker for listening to hunters and for having the vision to see the direction deer hunting in WI was headed if we maintained the present course. This may be the beginning of the end of the adversarial relationship between the two halves of Wisconsin’s deer management team that is the states deer managers and the private game managers that are deer hunters and that’s a good thing.

What I think some here and other media outlets fail to understand is the term “Problem statement” as it applies to the work of the deer trustee. See the link for a complete understanding of a problem statement

“A problem statement is a concise description of the issues that need to be addressed by a problem solving team and should be presented to them (or created by them) before they try to solve the problem. When bringing together a team to achieve a particular purpose provide them with a problem statement.”

The title of the Deer Trustees preliminary report says:

“INTERIM REPORT OF FINDINGS”

He and his team went to great lengths to explain where they are in the process and how they got there and what they have learned in order to arrive at a problem statement. In his report he makes several observations and summaries. They can be found on pages 16 thru 21. He then explained the next steps yet some want to pretend this was all we paid for and this is all we got for the money. They are either ignorant or purposefully trying to sour the public to the deer trustees work. We are seeing it here by the resident outdoor writer who follows that template.

I think people are smarter than they are being given credit for being by some in the media.